20 phrases about sharing life with others

Fernando Torrijos

Are we victims of the Age of Self? It is a logical question if we observe that issues such as self-actualization, personal growth or overcoming of limitations become centers of interest in our societies, in which the fight for survival it has passed for the majority to a third plane. Which is very good.

The paradoxical thing is that more and more human beingsonce their basic and even superfluous material needs are covered, instead of enjoying life, often show erratic trendsthey capsize mentally and they frequently engage in psychological crisis.

Go from I to us

It is worth asking what degree of responsibility this epidemic of self-absorption that we suffer can have in this situation; that pathology that generates egocentric perspective with which more and more people try to solve their problems; a point of view that starts from the premise that said problemssomehow, they are created by the Others.

The Others are those who are neither Me nor like Me. They are too many, they are alien to us… And even dare to interfere in our way and frustrate our dreams.

Sometimes we identify with them momentarily, because in what happens to them we are able to perceive a reflection of what could happenbut it is usually a pleasant feeling of compassion that lasts little

Luckily, not all those who are not Me are Others. At the midpoint of that constant struggle are others: those who have abandoned otherness to the extent that their lives matter to us. It is about the people who, without being me, are part of me; for this reason, to define them, I integrate them with myself in a higher unit that I call We.

There are us, like the familywhom we have not chosen: they are result of chance that we do not understand but that roots us in life. Others, like friends or partnerare the fruit of a consensus of mutual elections; in the limits are the companions with whom we share jobs or hobbies.

The absence of a superior unit marks our life: loneliness is nothing but the lack of us.

The importance of sharing

Possibly we are victims of the Age of Self, but let’s not forget that, more than hate or accident, what generates victimization is usually bad choicesdenial of problems or fear of change… And a misunderstanding of reality.

What if the usual explanation of the individual Self is a myth and what really counts is our social self? What if the “we” to whom we feel we belong are more important than those who preach Ego worship admit?

In the “production” of usThere is no doubt that chance intervenes. But it is the fruit, above all, of a shared jobof the daily chore, of the sum of details, of the Knowing next to you in the distance.

A proposal to grow is to recover the Others to outline who we are beyond what we seesymbolically, in the mirror.

Forget the self-absorption and feel them as the part of us that they are; accept them to come to accept us, and not so that they accept us; fight to know them as a way to get to know each other; love them to continue loving us.

To recover being “ourselves” and meditate, while we share, that old Arab saying that affirms that Hell is nothing but Paradise without people.